Champaign Central’s Chris Bush shoots a free throw against Centennial in Combes Gym, January 12th, 2024. Photo by Adam Edwards.
On February 4th, Champaign Central announced that their upcoming game against crosstown archrival Centennial would be moved from Harry Combes Gymnasium, their home for much of the past century, to the newly constructed North Gymnasium, constructed in 2021 during Central’s renovations project.
This announcement came as a shock to many, as Central had previously continued its tradition of playing in Combes Gym since the North Gym’s completion in 2021. Many Central students started to speak out to each other in their opposition to the change.
“I think it’s a load of crap,” remarked Central senior and student section member Jackson LeFaivre. “Some people are just weirded out by the fact that we’re gonna be in the North Gym, while there are also some students who feel as strongly as I do.”
When fellow Central senior Preston Carney was asked when he found out about the move, he answered, “About two weeks before the game. I’m friends with some of the basketball players and they were telling me about it.” When asked if he believed any of them were in favor of the move, he answered, “No, nobody wanted it.”
The differences between the two gyms are quite drastic. Combes Gym is a 90 year old arena the Maroons have played in for generations. On the door to the Maroons locker room, an old faded sign reads “Home of the Maroon Cagers”, an archaic term referring to basketball players. On the walls of Combes gym sit state championship banners honoring dozens of Maroon alumni, and an all-time wins board for the boys basketball team. Across the hall in the North Gym, however, exist bleachers which sit far off from the stands, no stage for a pep band to play on, and almost no imagery honoring the Maroons, save for the school’s name and logo being painted under each basket.
Yet the reason behind the move was clear. Although Central’s historic home contained a major home court advantage, its new gym contained hundreds more seats, allowing the school to sell more tickets. On top of this, Student sections were limited to 150 tickets for each school, forcing hundreds more students to pay extra to secure their seat in the North Gym, where the actual student section zone allotted hundreds more spots.
However, on February 11th when the Maroons took on the Chargers in the North Gym, some empty seats could be seen throughout, most notably in the Chargers student section and the bench side bleachers. Furthermore, the effect of the student sections on the game was neutered by their distance from the court.
“It reduces the impact of the crowd on the game, because it’s gonna feel a lot quieter,” answered LeFaivre on the differences between the home court effects of each gym.
Rather than being right over players as they passed the ball inbounds like in Combes Gym, Central and Centennial’s students remained far off in an environment which felt more like a neutral tournament court than a home gym.
“I like Combes Gym better, because it’s more compact,” remarked Carney. “It’s more loud, and it’s a better environment for sports, while the North Gym is so far away.”
The rivalry between Champaign’s two schools has always been intense, but in recent years, the rivalry has begun to take a turn for the worse, which was seen later in the boys game. Centennial students, aided in part by the distance between the bleachers and the court, began to taunt members of Central’s Bleacher Bums student section once the Maroons began to fall behind the Chargers in the fourth quarter. Since the two student sections were located next to each other in the gym, bottles and trash began to be thrown, and within seconds students were able to pour onto the wide aisle between the front row and court to confront each other, allowing chaos to play out in the stands. Before long, the game was stopped, and both student sections were ejected from the game.
Yet the damage had been done. Not only was the game taken out of the Maroons’ longtime home and put into a foreign environment, the game’s outcomes and violence were much different than anything else the Maroons had seen all season.
Furthermore, the outcome of each game was drastically different than the one played away at Centennial just a few weeks before, where Central fans situated close to the court at Centennial’s Coleman Carrodine gym were able to take over their rival’s home and rally their team to victory. The girls’ game in the North Gym ended in a narrow victory for Central, ending in a 52-44 victory for the Maroons, compared to their 50-19 blowout win in the previous matchup. The boys game went even worse, with the Maroons going from a 75-62 win in their first meetup this year at Carrodine to a 59-47 loss in the quiet North Gym.
When asked if the game’s setup in the North Gym affected anything between the student sections, Carney answered, “Yeah probably, definitely the student sections being right next to each other, and being more far apart (from the game action) there’s just more stuff for them to do.” When asked how the student sections looked last year in Combes Gym, he replied, “It was good, because there weren’t as many people allowed down in the student sections at Combes.”
So when it comes time next year for district and school administrators to plan for “The Game” between Central and Centennial, Central’s home location shouldn’t even be considered a debate. After this year’s disaster in the North Gym, where student sections situated next to each other resorted to fighting late in the game, where the distance from the bleachers and the court toned down the noise brought on by fans, where the lack of championship banners and a pep band killed the home court atmosphere, it’s clear that we must go back to our home in Combes Gym.
Combes Gym provides a deafening atmosphere, with bleachers situated right up on the court, allowing students to provide a “sixth man” advantage for the Maroons. At the same time, the small capacity allows less students to get in while maintaining this loud environment, creating the advantage of sound, while providing less opportunity for hooligans to create the violent scene which played out in the North Gym on February 11. Furthermore, the location of Combes gym’s bleachers gives very little space for people to step off the stands without intruding onto the court, which can help lower the chance of opposing fans attempting to confront each other. While the student sections were directly next to each other in the past even at Combes Gym, the trash fight provides clear evidence that the entire lower bowl should be given to the Bleacher Bums of Champaign High School, while visiting fans should be put in the upper tier, located as far as possible from the Bleacher Bums.
When we look to the future here at Champaign Central, we must preserve our history in all aspects, and this includes our usage of the historic Combes Gymnasium. The people of Champaign once voted to keep Central Central to maintain its convenient location in town and preserve our history as the original Champaign High School, so we must maintain this history by hosting our rivals in the deafening and historic Harry Combes Gymnasium. Generations of Maroons past have competed in this gym, and we should hope that generations more can continue adding chapters to this historic environment.`
